There are many pivoting moments when you start a company:

  • The day you actually quit your job to focus on it full time.
  • The time you receive the most perfect hand cream you could dream of creating.
  • The month where you sell over 800 products on Kickstarter before you’ve even launched…
  • Oh, and there’s that time when you see your product for the first time in a glossy magazine, humbly nested between Estee Lauder’s best seller Advanced Night Time Repair and La Roche-Posay’s Baume AP+ Lipikar. We’ve rubbed our eyes a few times. And again. And it was still there. GALLINEE IS IN THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF FRENCH GLAMOUR.We won’t let success go to our heads but we think look quite good!

We were so excited we had to take the weekend off before we could write this post. Otherwise it would have resembled this:

via GIPHY

Seriously. We are psyched out.
We’re thinking about turning the article into a wallpaper and plaster it around the office, in our houses, and possibly try to cover a few of those gigantic FitFlop ads you’ve been seeing on buses if you live in London.

But what does the article say?
Alice Elia, the fabulous beauty director of the magazine (and our favourite person in the whole world.) is asking the million-dollar question: Are bacteria our new BFF?
She talks about how the beauty industry is getting obsess with probiotics, microbiomes and good bacteria.
To try to answer this very serious question, she interviewed people from the industry, including some extremly talented beauty specialists, like… us (did we mentioned Marie has a thesis on the application of probiotics on cosmetics?).
We’ve translated the article here, it’s really enlightening if you are thinking about trying probiotics cosmetics. Have a good read and happy Monday.

xx Anais

* Glamour circulation, Conde Nast, 2015

DISCLAMER: we are not professional translators, so it might still smell and sound a bit French. We tried to stay as close as possible to the French version. We didn’t add anything to make us sound better but we did skip the part where the journalist writes about probiotics in food because it’s not relevant to us directly.

GLAMOUR FRANCE DECEMBER 2016

ARE BACTERIA OUR NEW BEST FRIENDS?  

Probiotics, biofilm and skin microbiome … Recently, the beauty sphere has eyes
for microorganisms that populate (among others) our intestines and the surface of our skin. What if the secret to having more energy and a sublime complexion was there? By Alice Elia

Until recently, we tried to eliminate them restlessly… Today the (good) bacteria are about to colonize the beauty industry en masse. In the wake of Giulia Enders’s book phenomenon (Gut, 2015), the idea that the digestive system and his cohort of unsavory population could be the heart our welfare started to catch on.

Next step?
A landslide is about to engulf the beauty industry. No wonder when we know that we are ourselves made 90% of bacteria. “All the labs are closely interested to the issue, “says Anaïs Lombard, co-founder of the young cosmetics brand based on pre- and probiotics, Gallinée. From the emergence of specialized startups to the shy conversion operated by well-known brands increasingly interested in the microbiome (all microbial species associated to humans), the bacteria are coming out of the beauty closet.

Why?
Because in our increasingly sanitized environments with our diets full of industrialized products, our systematic use of antibiotics and our hygiene-obsessed routines to try to eliminate dirt, our ecosystems show a growing deficit of good bacteria.

The result?
An increased susceptibility to viruses, cases of allergies are increasing are an alarming rate, various digestive disorders and a proliferation of skin conditions (eczema, atopy, acne …). Not counting micro-phenomena’s of inflammation that keep munching our beauty assets: redness, accelerated aging …

The solution?
Turn to more “bacteria friendly” routines. (And no, it doesn’t mean you should stop showering.)

“When bacteria do their coming out”
Some brands (like Clinique, Lancôme, L’Oréal Paris or Estée Lauder with the mythical Advanced Night Repair) have been incorporating them in their formula for a long time, without putting it forward.

What’s new?
Some brands are starting to talk more about it (Novexpert), and some make it their brand DNA, such as Aurelia Probiotic Skincare and most of all the very new Gallinée, created by two 30somethings French women, whose products will be sold starting March 2016. “The first 5 products of our range contain a patented mix of lactic acid and pre and probiotics to support the skin microbiome” explains cofounder Marie Drago. All you have to do is try their hand cream to see the difference.